Collectif Chto Delat
with Dmitry Vilensky and Nikolay Oleynikov
Artists Dmitry Vilensky and Nikolay Oleynikov from the Chto Delat collective present their careers, their work, and their experience with the collective and collaborative projects.
Lecture in English.
Chto Delat (which can be translated as “What is to be done?”) is an artistic and activist collective. Founded in 2003 in Saint Petersburg by artists, critics, philosophers, and writers, its name is inspired by a novel by Nikolai Chernyshevsky (1863) and immediately evokes the first autonomous socialist workers’ organizations and feminist cooperatives in Russia. Lenin revived the term in his 1902 treatise “What Is To Be Done?”, reflecting his commitment to social emancipation and the politicization of cultural production.
The collective, which brings together members from Saint Petersburg, Moscow, and Nizhny Novgorod, develops projects at the crossroads of art, political theory, and activism. Its works, often interdisciplinary (performances, installations, videos, publications), aim to analyze and support social struggles, while questioning Soviet legacies and contemporary issues. Forced into exile since 2022 following their anti-war stance, most of them continue their activities with Chto Delat International and Chto Delat Emergency Project Room in Berlin, among others.
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Dmitry Vilensky (born in Leningrad in 1964, lives in Hamburg) is an artist, educator and cultural environmentalist with no art degrees. He elicits situations and relationships. No one knows what he is up to right now: perhaps he is editing a new issue of Chto Delat’s newspaper, or maybe administering the Chto Delat Mutual Aid Fund, or editing a film, or talking with the participants of the School of Emergencies, or making a set for a new play (or installation), or preparing another Mad Tea Party (or Singing together party)… Most likely, he is doing all this and dozens of other activities at the same time, surrounded by various comradely compositions of bodies and minds in Chto Delat Emergency Project Room in Berlin, at Zoom and in many other…
Nikolay Oleynikov is a fermented artist, a distilled punk and evergreen antifascist; recently, a refugee, he is a member of Chto Delat and of Arkady Kots Band; co-founder and mentor at Chto Delat School of Engaged Art (School of Rosa); co-curator of Free Home University; part of the FireFly Frequencies radio, author of Sex of the Oppressed (FreeMarxistPress/PS-Guelph, 2013-2024), co-editor of When the Roots Start Moving. Resonating with Zapatismo (Archive Books, 2021).
He teaches at NABA, Rome.
© Chto Delat